It was not a surprise that the response of the New York Times to the Connecticut public-school shootings was to run, not one, not two, not three, but four editorials calling for yet another push for gun control. The mainstream media have been waiting literally years for something like this to happen, and they are not about to let such a crisis go to waste.

The television is full of weeping parents and pictures of angelic children. Facebook is afire with solipsistic women attempting to co-opt the tragedy for their own emotional gratification. Politicians wipe away fake tears and thunder about the need for “meaningful action.” Psychologists blather about the killer’s motivation and wonder if his murderous rage stemmed from inadequate toilet-training, psychotropic medications or his parent’s divorce. Conspiracy theorists note inconsistencies in the news stories and mark the suicide that always seems to be accompanied by reports of a second gunman.

We know the drill. This isn’t our first rodeo.

Americans who value freedom know that they cannot permit ignorant comments from the overly emotional about how “we must do something” to stand unchallenged. The political elite that seeks to disarm the American people is getting increasingly desperate, seeing how public support for gun rights has consistently grown in keeping with the federal government’s assertion of its right to fly armed drones over their heads and assassinate them at will. They are alarmed by the way in which all of their attempts to emotionally manipulate the American people into submitting to a blatantly unconstitutional disarmament have not only failed, but backfired.

The ruling elite is presently embarking upon a full-court press for gun control, the likes of which have not been seen since George W. Bush’s administration used the 2008 financial crisis to ram TARP down the throats of an unwilling American people and bail out his friends on Wall Street. But it isn’t working. It isn’t working because we know the drill.

That is why your liberal friends are complaining that this isn’t the time to politicize the tragedy. That is why the left is whining that they are tired of hearing “guns don’t kill people, crazy autistic male nerds on medication kill people.” They are whining and complaining because they are learning, to their horror, that even their appeals to the emotions generated by the deaths of lovely little schoolchildren are falling on experienced-deafened ears. They’ve been waiting years for this opportunity, and now they’re learning that their best shot is futile.

Don’t give them an inch. Cut them no slack. Punch back twice as hard. When they bring the knife of emotional blackmail to the argument, draw your .50 caliber Desert Eagle of facts, logic and history and blow them away without mercy.

Ask them this: If guns, and not people, kill people, why don’t they first disarm the more heavily armed government and police people before trying to disarm the public?

Ask them this: How does it make any sense to disarm the public and leave the government armed when over the last 100 years, governments around the world, including the U.S. federal government, have killed vastly more people in time of peace than all of the private murders in the world combined?

Ask them this: 800,000 law enforcement officers have killed 525 unarmed citizens with guns so far this year. Approximately 310 million private citizens killed an estimated 10,500 of their fellow citizens with guns over the same period of time. Given that a law enforcement officer is 19.4 times more likely to shoot and kill an unarmed American than a private citizen, if you genuinely care about reducing gun deaths, why aren’t you calling for the disarmament of law enforcement?

A free people must be an armed people. Without private arms, there is no freedom. America’s Founding Fathers didn’t fight to preserve the freedom of the press, for the emanations and penumbras of a woman’s right to choose or even for the right to vote. They fought to prevent their own government from disarming them. The Battles of Lexington and Concord took place because government troops under the command of Lt. Col. Francis Smith were ordered to destroy the weapons being stored at Concord.

That famous phrase, “The British are coming,” meant that the British government was coming for American guns. Americans didn’t give them up then. Americans will not give them up now. No, Americans will never give them up; he who surrenders his unalienable right to arms also gives up his right to call himself an American.